Strøm Festival 2024: MUSIKZAG – Meandering current
Live review by Ivna Franic
Much like the 2023 program, this year’s Strøm Festival balanced between two extremes: the party – as expected of an electronic music festival, and the meditation. On the one hand, the festival featured its now-traditional metro party Trans-Metro Express as well as several other club music events, while on the other it presented events like Inner Travels – two days of vibroacoustic sound massage you could experience lying down on the mats in a villa in Frederiksberg, and MUSIKZAG.
It was MUSIKZAG that the festival kicked off with on Thursday, August 22nd at Glyptoteket. The five-hour show was conceived as a revival of the eponymous 1972 concert, which was set up by electronic music pioneers Jens Wilhelm Pedersen aka Fuzzy and Gunner Møller Pedersen, and was considered the first electronic music concert in Denmark. Initiated as their reaction to – and rejection of – the apolitical character of the passively consumed muzak, with MUSIKZAG, the duo insisted on directly addressing the listeners instead of dulling their senses “as commercial industrial music deliberately does,” as they stated back then. As would become apparent during the five-hour show, the younger composers are not content to let their music drift aimlessly in the background either.
For the 2024 rendition of the event, Strøm invited composers of different generations to join Gunner Møller Pedersen and compose new music pieces based, in part, on the recordings from the original concert. The audience-level stage was set in the middle of Glyptoteket’s central hall, a rectangular-shaped set of tables draped in photos from the 1972 show that took place in the same room, with a bunch of wires, various gear, and the old Pedersen & Pedersen reels lying around on the tables. Having immediately fired up the reel-to-reel players, Pedersen opened the event with a speech in Danish detailing the origins of the MUSIKZAG project.
The interesting thing was that, possibly due to a recent revival of ambient and new age, the music that Pedersen played did not sound overly outdated. Anton Friisgaard, whose new album Teratai Åkande had come out earlier in August via Belgium’s Stroom Records, was the first to take the stage after Gunner Møller Pedersen. With an interesting setup including a laptop, keyboard, and some sort of hacked reel-to-reel, Friisgaard elegantly steered the concert into a more dynamic territory enriched with beats.
“Together, the two built an impressive set of looped incantations and samples with a touch of noise and a climactic, eerie middle part evocative of howling wind or, simply, the sound of theremin.”
Thomas Knak’s last-minute cancellation opened up a space for Pedersen and Friisgaard to play longer, both alone and together. Pedersen went deeper into ambient territory with his tape reels and chords that sounded as if they were turning into sighs. Together, the two built an impressive set of looped incantations and samples with a touch of noise and a climactic, eerie middle part evocative of howling wind or, simply, the sound of theremin. The closing part of their set featured more bass, providing a wavy brain massage before the somewhat pastoral ending.
Sofie Birch, who came on after them, was probably the most perfectly cast member of the young composers’ crew, in sound as well as in spirit. It was the slightly hippie-ish, new-age vibe that Birch brought to the table that made for a much-fitting addition to the revival of the seventies’ concert. Over the backdrop of gentle string chords, field-recording sounds of nature and birdsong meddled with Birch’s own ethereal coos. The most impressive part of the performance was the depth of the sound which revealed just how rich and fleshed-out her take on ambient is.
“Looking harmless in a Space Jam T-shirt, SØS Gunver Ryberg followed a trippy intro with a carefully built wall of noise that would ultimately take over Glyptoteket’s central hall in dramatic gusts.”
Perhaps better known for operating in the darker realms of experimental electronic music, SØS Gunver Ryberg may have seemed like an unusual fit for an afternoon of woozy ambiance. And while her set definitely stood out of the bunch, it also made for a refreshing ending. Pedersen’s continuous involvement in the show ensured smooth transitions between sets regardless of the differences in the artists’ respective approaches, which produced starkly different takes on the original material, and made them feel like part of a cohesive whole. Rather than break away from everything that came before, Ryberg used the opportunity to bring the evening to its climax.
Looking harmless in a Space Jam T-shirt, SØS Gunver Ryberg followed a trippy intro with a carefully built wall of noise that would ultimately take over Glyptoteket’s central hall in dramatic gusts. The night slowly crept in – as visible through the hall’s glass roof – allowing a light touch of darkness to accompany the ominous but hesitant sounds and the pumping beats that arrived at the very end of Ryberg’s set.
“The five-hour session was immersive enough that the security guards occasionally had to warn individuals not to lean on the sculptures while dozing off on the sides of the hall.”
It had been suggested in the event description to walk around Glyptoteket and explore its collection with music as the backdrop. In part, it did make sense to move and look around, and imagine the ancient sculptures coming to life. However, the largely ambient aspect of the show made it hard to resist sitting or lying down on the pillows and carpets scattered on the cold stone floor. The five-hour session was immersive enough that the security guards occasionally had to warn individuals not to lean on the sculptures while dozing off on the sides of the hall.
Unlike some other music events taking place at Glyptoteket, the MUSIKZAG revival concert had a relaxing vibe that managed to break the ultra-serious, traditional shackles of the cold, detached atmosphere of the venue. With Gunner Møller Pedersen taking the microphone at the end of each performance to thank the artists and the audience, the audience clearly felt invited to not only wander around Glyptoteket but also to walk around the table and explore the artists’ set-ups and even chat with Pedersen. He was there, behind the tables the whole time – whether he was playing or not – making us feel as if we’d walked in on a wizard’s session with his young apprentices.
Info: MUSIKZAG took place in Glyptoteket on August 22, 2024.
